The Boy Who Cried Freebird

Rock and Roll Fables and Sonic Storytelling by Mitch Myers [$25.95]

by Jodie Janella Keith

In The Boy Who Cried Freebird, Mitch Myers drifts between musical genres and literary styles. With a nod to granddaddies of rock criticism Lester Bangs, Nick Toches, and Richard Meltzer, Myers has attempted an “allegorical commentary via playful, music-oriented vignettes”. Every piece is about people interacting with music in some way. Rock oriented fables are spliced between long-form journalistic pieces focusing on a variety of genres such as folk, jazz, ambient, punk, and metal. Despite reading like a book set on random, Myers is a fantastic writer with a great ear for rhythm. His pieces on jazz have an implied swing beat built into the words, while his writing about hard rock is blunt and frenetic. Every piece is about people interacting with music in some way. Myers writes about musicians and listeners and their equally obsessive relationships with music because he is one of them. Despite the rapid-fire disorganization, Freebird welcomes rock geeks in with open arms and gives its readers a big hug.